Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

106 After moving to Yorkshire in the mid-1880s we find him playing for Ripon in 1888 and 1889 (having played for Ripon Young Men’s Friendly Society in the two previous seasons). Then it was on to his curacy at Ashtead, where he played for the strong Leatherhead side between 1890 and 1893; it was here that we find him scoring his first two known centuries in matches during the Leatherhead Cricket Week – 102 not out v Dorking on 5 August 1890, and 101 v MCC four days later. At the same time he also turned out when available for the Ashtead club, scoring two more centuries for them in 1891. In that season he caught the eye of those in positions of authority at The Oval, for he was invited by C.W.Alcock to play in three matches for the Gentlemen of Surrey. The scores of two of those matches were not included in his scrapbook; in the other, against the Public Schools, he must have been disappointed with a score of just eight. After moving back north he played for five seasons for the Oulton club, and was also twice selected to play for Bedale and District in pre-season matches against the full Yorkshire eleven. Schofield Haigh was too good for him in the 1897 match, bowling him twice for scores of just two and one; he did a little better the following year, making 12 and five. At the same time he was also playing for the Yorkshire Gentlemen, for whom he scored 92 not out against the Eton Ramblers, carrying his bat through an innings of 155 (‘brilliant batting without the semblance of a chance’) and 75 against the Harrow Wanderers. He scored over 1,000 runs in all matches in the 1897 season; newspaper reports at the time said that this was the third time he had reached that landmark. He presumably was the source of that piece of information, which if nothing else suggests that he kept his own statistics carefully! In 1894 he had become a member of MCC, and played the first two of his three matches for them in that season. An innings of 49 in his first match, against the Notts Amateurs at Trent Bridge - the second highest score in an all-out total of 315 - proved to be his highest score for the club. 80 I think we are getting a picture now of a batsman who whilst not of the highest class, and perhaps not quite of the very best of those in the next level down, nevertheless excelled at a level one notch down from that - in short, at good club standard. He continued to impress when he moved to Norfolk, scoring a century for Honingham in 1899 and also turning out for the top quality Dereham club. And all the while he was also returning home to play for sides in the area where he first met the game. Radnorshire did not have an organised county club until he helped to set one up in 1911 (and even then that club was only ‘Gentlemen of Radnorshire’), but elevens of gentlemen representing the county had been playing occasional, and later more regular, matches since 1869. Herefordshire too did not have an established representative county eleven at this time, but a club side known as Herefordshire was in 80 His third and last match for MCC was 18 years later, when he played against Malvern College in a strong eleven that included H.K, R.E. and W.L.Foster, and former Test cricketers J.H.Board, A.M.Miller and G.J.Thompson. Opening the batting, he scored just one in his only innings. The oldest of them all